


to be clear-minded towards the next day's treacherous objects

by chaila



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-08
Updated: 2011-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-19 03:31:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaila/pseuds/chaila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...not from a lack of love but from necessity, to be clear-minded towards the next day’s treacherous objects.” An alliance, in three acts. Post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to be clear-minded towards the next day's treacherous objects

**Author's Note:**

> This is a consolidation of a few ficlets I've written into a single proper fic. Originally posted in three separate parts [here](http://chaila.dreamwidth.org/87341.html?thread=1386285#cmt1386285), [here](http://chaila43.livejournal.com/125678.html?thread=1982190#t1982190) and [here](http://chaila.dreamwidth.org/94234.html).

**I.**

After Jesse's mission fails, she spends a long time—too long—in seedy roadside motels, curled around herself. Then she does what she always does; she plans another one. By the time she manages to pick herself up, choose the best of limited options, and track Sarah down, Derek and John are mysteriously nowhere to be seen, replaced by a tall black man and a young redheaded girl, neither of whom Jesse knows. It's a foreboding development, but she forces the panic down as she waits and watches for an opportunity. She thinks Sarah might be less likely to shoot her on sight if the kid's not around.

When Jesse watches the man leave with the girl, she waits twenty minutes and cautiously enters the house alone, empty hands in plain sight, trusting everything she's ever heard about Sarah Connor not being an indiscriminate shooter. She immediately finds a gun pointed at her anyway. Her hands twitch but she fights the urge to draw her own weapon.

Sarah's initial surprise quickly turns into a scowl of recognition. Good, Jesse thinks. No need for awkward introductions.

"Derek's dead," Sarah says cruelly.

Jesse flinches as her stomach lurches; she forces it away until later. "I'm not here for Derek," she says.

"You want another crack at John?" Sarah says coldly. "Sorry you missed your chance?" She starts to cross the room towards Jesse.

"I was never going to hurt John," Jesse retorts.

Sarah scoffs, still approaching.

"Your crack team looks a little thin," Jesse says evenly, not looking away from Sarah's face. "Maybe you could use some help."

"I think you should go," Sarah says. "Now."

Jesse reaches slowly behind her and holds her gun out by the barrel as Sarah stops in front of her. Sarah stares but doesn't take it, so Jesse tosses it onto a nearby sofa. "I'm here to help."

"I don't need your help," Sarah says. "She was just a kid."

"Don't talk to me about her," Jesse spits, losing her careful control a little. She takes a few breaths. "You haven't been there." She waves a hand around. "You haven't seen this all burn. You haven't seen the metal come back and take over what's left. You don't know what you would and wouldn't do."

Sarah scowl fades a little. "I thought about killing her myself," she says, suddenly deflated. She lowers her weapon a little. “I could have done it,” she says with obvious pain in her voice. She doesn't elaborate. Jesse hadn't considered that possible outcome.

"Are you going to shoot me?" Jesse asks.

"I haven't decided," Sarah snaps.

"Well then," Jesse says evenly, "What is your plan?"

"I'm going to stop it," Sarah says harshly.

Jesse's face twists into a smile.

 

 **II.**

"I asked for a double," Sarah says uselessly, standing in the doorway of a nondescript motel room. It's much like all the rooms they've stayed in recently but for the lone bed in the middle of the room.

"I'm sure you did," Jesse says from behind her, clearly amused at Sarah's annoyance. "I've slept in worse." She brushes past Sarah into the room, causing more physical contact than is strictly necessary and making a show of eyeing Sarah up and down as she does so.

It's been just the two of them for days now, with James and Savannah off the grid with the Dysons. When Sarah had proposed it, she doesn’t think anyone had been pleased; James had visibly bristled and Terissa had merely pursed her lips, though neither had said much. Sarah's not happy about the separations either—she has enough to worry about even when she can keep them all in sight—but these short scouting missions are quicker and safer with just the two of them. They're attempting to formulate a workable plan to acquire—steal—the technology that Danny Dyson has been describing since they'd snatched him back several weeks ago. That means Kaliba and unpredictable situations that Sarah is not yet prepared to bring any of the others into. Danny and James think they can turn the technology to their advantage, that it can be more useful to them intact rather than in a million pieces. Terissa is agnostic on the subject or, more precisely, she is thus far silent. In this new post-John world, with the wide-open future shifting under her feet, Sarah's almost convinced enough to let them try.

Jesse is resolutely opposed. Without the buffer of other people, every interaction is a tiny battle in which they revisit the question. Jesse's an efficient and skilled fighter and she has an unsettling ability to make herself an invaluable support while at the same time never letting Sarah forget that she fervently disagrees with every choice not to blow it all sky high. Sarah watches Jesse closely for signs of betrayal. Sabotage would not be difficult.

Sarah feels like she's been pushing against a wall with all her strength for days. In the fading light of the last rays of sun that manage to struggle through the dirty windows and thin curtains, she follows Jesse into the room and drops onto the edge of the only bed, lowering her face into her hands and rubbing at her temples. She doesn't even care that Jesse will see. Showing weakness can’t be a good tactic, but she’s tired of the fight. She has enough doubts of her own and no strength left to convince anyone else.

The bed dips beside her beneath Jesse's weight. Sarah steels herself and wishes desperately for more space.

Jesse silently pulls her boots off, tosses her gun onto the bedside table, and pulls one leg up to her chest, wrapping her arms around it. "I trusted them once," she says conversationally, like they’re picking up the thread of an earlier discussion. "I served with metal on the sub and I thought they were good men, good soldiers. They followed orders as well as all of us did. Usually better. At least they did until the last one came, the liquid one. It wasn't like anything I'd ever seen before.” She pauses. “I think that one was using us. We were following its orders."

The world has slid from dusk to night in a few short minutes, and there's no longer much light coming from outside. Sarah moves to switch on the bedside lamp, but gets only a stubbornly dark bulb and a futile click that seems to reverberate in the small room. Jesse continues in the same voice, low and hard and cutting, "I've seen how it starts and I've seen how it ends, and there's nothing I won't do stop it from happening again." To anyone else, the words might sound like she’s rationalizing or apologizing for the constant conflict, but Sarah knows that she isn’t.

Sarah says nothing. In every future she has ever heard about, there is war, death and destruction, and too many machines in charge of too many things. In every future she has ever heard about, she has failed. She is not indifferent to Jesse’s particular account of her failure, but neither is it the only version she is trying to prevent.

And so they’re back again at the same place, side by side with nowhere else to go and nothing more to say; a stalemate without a truce. Jesse turns to look at Sarah next to her on the bed, leaning her cheek on her hand. It seems that she is not out of arguments to make; she reaches out with the other hand and lightly pushes Sarah's hair off her face. Sarah instinctively recoils slightly from the touch. It is unexpectedly gentle, almost maliciously so, and carries an unmistakable challenge.

Jesse meets her gaze and her look too is softer than Sarah would have expected, though it doesn't much resemble love, and it's certainly not unconditional. It’s trusting, but warily so, and holds dark traces of failures Sarah hasn't committed yet. It's a hungry, demanding sort of desire; Jesse looks at her like she might be the person Jesse wants her to be, and like Jesse will never forgive her if she isn't.

"This can't happen," Sarah says, but even as she's saying it she knows it's probably a lie. She can’t make any of her litany of usual objections stick. They could hardly complicate things any further. They are both intensely pragmatic people. Neither one of them is naïve or romantic. They are both more than capable of making personal sacrifices for larger goals. There's a lot of destruction between them to prove it.

Jesse slides a few inches closer. Sarah wonders if this is another means of persuasion, a new tactic in the ongoing war between them. "This won't change anything," she says. She intends it as a warning, or a calling of a bluff, and it comes out in bitten-off words, even more harshly than she means it.

"Is that what you think this is?" Jesse smirks, undeterred. Sarah notices, not for the first time, that up close, Jesse's smiles don't have much humor in them. That too seems to hint at her own future failures. Jesse leans in close enough for her breath to stir Sarah's hair; now that instinct has passed, Sarah refuses to back away. “You can’t ever trust the robots, Sarah,” she breathes into Sarah's ear, in a low voice exaggerated for effect. She’s still smirking but the look in her eyes is dark and serious.

Sarah shivers involuntarily but still does not pull away. "No," she says, not entirely sure which statement she's responding to. Jesse moves back a little and stills; for a moment, Sarah wonders whether they'll be suspended there forever, sitting on the edge of a motel bed, nowhere at all, both too stubborn to either back away or close the last expanse of space between them. But Jesse finally leans forward—of course she does—because as much as she stands like a wall in Sarah's new life, immovable and unyielding, equal parts doubt and faith, she does this too, moves forward more or less with Sarah, always acting according to some private, unrevealed calculus of her own.

Sarah kisses her back and tries not to make any promises.

 

 **III.**

Though Jesse had been less able to convince herself it would not all burn again, Sarah is better prepared for the end of the world. Post Judgment Day, Sarah's face grows harder and more lined, but she keeps a kind of bitter hope that sustains them all. The solid feel of her anchors Jesse through the hunger and the cold, the pain and the hate. She still tastes like everything Jesse's already lost. They do not really fit like this; they clash together anyway, a cacophony that leaves Jesse's ears ringing for hours. Their sharp edges and old wounds have always aligned too closely for much real comfort; the worst parts of Jesse's past still correspond with all of Sarah's darkest fears. They are each equally unable to yield, leaving them alone, together, in the dark. It is a desperate kind of reassurance.

They are much better as leaders than lovers. Jesse's harsh voice of opposition is far less painful when it is not whispered into ears and scratched onto skin. Jesse is still an absolutist where Sarah is no longer. After she sent John with three machines who did not wish to kill him, she made herself consider a grayer perspective. Now Sarah forces her hatred of the machines down until she feels nauseous, makes herself see less rigid points of view, the bigger picture, if it's what they need to do to win. Nobody hates the metal as purely as Jesse.

The resistance commanders have a meeting like all the other meetings; rotation reports, updates on the reprogramming efforts, details of potential signs of whatever form the metal formerly known as Catherine Weaver might take now. As the meeting wraps up, Sarah reiterates that finding her is a resistance priority, ignoring the blaze of Jesse's eyes at the pronoun. They have a machine of their own by now, of course, under the strict supervision of Ellison and Danny, but both insist that the necessary next step of the plan is finding Weaver.

Jesse and Sarah sit side by side after the others clear out, staring straight ahead, Jesse seething while Sarah simply sits.

"They kill humans, Sarah," Jesse says, like always. "That's all they do." They have been over this countless times. She sighs. "By the end," she says in a lower voice, "We couldn't tell the damn difference." She blinks against pooling tears. "We couldn't tell the difference."

Sarah closes her eyes against the same old argument, slowly breathes out. "It'll be different this time," she says.

"How?" Jesse asks sharply. "You won't know until it's too late. They're working for you, like good little soldiers, until they're not, and then it's too late." She reaches a hand to Sarah's face, forcing Sarah to look at her. There is no gentleness in the touch. "How can it be different?"

Sarah doesn't look away. "I have you," she says.


End file.
